Leespeaks | Scribbles | American Studies

American Study #16

War, Peace and the Rosedale Arch

Orginally published in The View, 8 February 1991

Rosedale Arch 1991

The first thing I did that day was take some recyclables to the Jefferson Smurfit recycling center near the intersection of Rainbow and Southwest Boulevards. After that, I planned to visit the Rosedale Arch, a World War I memorial nearby. You can see the stone arch from the recycling center, nestled high in the trees, sober and Ionic.

After placing paper, aluminum and glass in their proper places, I had every intention of going straight to the arch. But I saw fire engines, lights all aglow, congregating further down the boulevard and decided to drive by and see what was going on.

Now, you might wonder why would a person responsible enough to recycle without his arm being twisted would go out of his way to gawk at a bunch of fire trucks, to lookie-loo in hopes of sighting destruction. I wondered this myself as I turned the car around in a hardware store parking lot to make another pass.

Certainly, there was no shortage of crisis that day. It was the Friday before the U.S. began dropping bombs in the Middle East. While I was separating green and brown bottles in KCK, protesters were getting signs ready to wave at cars driving past the J.C. Nichols fountain. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of troops and megatons of explosives were poised on either side of a Line in the Sand on the other side of the globe.

Up by the arch it was windy and cold. A couple sat huddled in their car with the engine idling. I parked a few spaces away and walked to the arch. Freezing rain and snow had fallen a day or two before. The snow crunched under my feet and, beneath the powder, sheets of ice cracked. I stood for awhile, looking out over Southwest Blvd., where 7th Street Trafficway becomes Rainbow. Traffic droned in the distance and above me the leafless trees creaked from the weight of the ice clinging to them.

According to the WPA Guide to 1930’s Kansas, the arch was built in 1923 to commemorate “the organization on Mt. Marty, in 1917, of the 117th Ammunition Train of the famous “Rainbow Division,” which served in France under Gen. Henri Gouraud, and also honors Wyandotte County men who served in the War.”

The inscription on the arch reads: “Erected by the people of Rosedale in honor of its citizens who answered their country’s call and served under arms for the triumph of right over might in the world war.”

Standing below the arch, my mind full of thoughts about that desert so far away, I couldnÕt shake the feeling that might has fared much better than right since the War to End All Wars.

In the following few days, I attended two peace demonstrations on the Plaza. On both days I saw an encouraging mix of people -- different shapes, sizes, ages and colors. There were many students, retro-hippies and New Age types (I heard a man apologize for missing a Tai Chi party), but there were also elderly men and women holding signs and waving to cars. On the first day, an Arab-American woman spoke, saying she didn’t want Americans to die, then led the crowd in a song about peace. Despite the cold, there was hope in the air.

At the second demonstration, with the U.N. deadline approaching, I noticed a disturbing undercurrent of anger in some of the peace chanting. A Palestinian man spoke about peace, adding angrily that if George Bush wanted to send troops somewhere he should send them to the West Bank. A protestant minister also spoke of peace, of keeping peace in our hearts. Good advice, but hard to do with so much hatred in the air.

The following day the bombs began to rain on Iraq and Kuwait. That same day I ran into a man I know from Afghanistan, a doctor.

“Have you heard the news?” he asked, his voice trembling. I said I had.

“Two crazy men,” he said, shaking his head bitterly. “Because of these two men many people will die.”

Some people in this country would be outraged that a foreigner would say such things. Such people are ignorant. To this man, war means something few Americans can comprehend. To this man, who has lived for years in exile and still can’t return to his home, war does not mean “kicking ass.” It means the destruction of homes and property; it means that bodies will be mangled, that children will be orphaned; it means the imprisonment, torture and death of friends and relatives; and it means a legacy of suspicion and fear for future generations.

Seventy years ago, young men from hereabouts went to Europe to fight. Many of them died, by bullet, bayonet or poison gas, and now most who mourned them are also dead. But the arch remains in Rosedale, in plain sight, to remind us of what happened thousands of miles and many years ago.

Time has made it a deceptive monument for a culture eager for simple explanations. Up there among the trees, the arch is serene and classical enough to make war seem almost noble. It seldom is. It is hell, brutal, blinding, messy hell and at best an evil necessity.

When the monuments to the Persian Gulf war are built, what will we remember?